Cannibal mystery as Russians found in wild

RUSSIAN investigators have opened a murder case after two fishermen were rescued following three months lost in a remote far east forest amid fears the pair could have eaten a companion to stay alive, officials say.

Four men disappeared in August on a river-fishing expedition to the vast Yakutia region in the Russian Far East, one of the most remote and inhospitable places in the world.

Rescuers finally found two of the men this month by the Sutam River some 250 kilometres from the nearest town of Neryungri in the south of Yakutia, but without two companions.

The men claimed their group had split up and said the others were likely still alive, as they were used to living in the open.

But a murder probe was opened after a team of top investigators from the regional capital Yakutsk found fragments of a human corpse close to the place where the pair was found.

"Investigators carried out an examination of two areas. Fragments of a human corpse with signs of a violent death were discovered and removed," the Yakutia branch of Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement.

"A criminal case into suspected murder has been opened."

According to a report on the lifenews.ru website, the men have fled the hospital where they were being treated for severe frostbite and were now on the run.

Russia has no article in the criminal code for cannibalism but the state RIA Novosti news agency said that the initial theory was that the two men had eaten one companion. It was not clear what happened to the fourth man.

"What we found were chopped human bones, fragments of a skull and a bloodstained chunk of ice," an investigator, who was not named, told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid daily.

"It's clear that this person did not die of his own accord," said the investigator.

Meanwhile local news site Sakhapress.ru said that their expedition had been aimed at gold prospecting and not fishing as claimed.

Two of the four are local inhabitants of the Russian Far East and the others are from the region of Saratov in central Russia who were visiting the area.

The human remains have yet to be identified.

The wife of one of the men who remains missing, named as Andrei Kurochkin from Saratov, said she had not yet given up hope for her husband.

"The police said that they had found human remains. But I believe that Andrei is alive. I am hoping other hunters have found him and he is not alone," Olga Kurochkina told the newspaper.

The rescued pair, reportedly aged 37 and 35, have denied any wrongdoing and said they had managed to survive as the winter set in a wooden hut by foraging for wild foods.